Boring, complex and important: a recipe for the web's dire future

Technology killed storytelling, then resurrected it

Ethiopia is a land of stories that are sometimes very, very mean. These are stories of children killing stepmothers, cuckolded husbands and wives wreaking terrible revenges and the occasional uplifting story involving local animals; the hyena is a particular favourite.

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Stories, like humankind, probably started in Ethiopia and gradually spread around the world. Brer Rabbit tales in North America came from the West Coast of Africa and the connected folk stories of the world became iterated, copied and changed, but based on many shared ideas and myths. This is perfectly explained by Robert Graves in his two seminal books of Greek Myths that show the similarities between the world's folk tales.

But then somebody stamped out the campfire, pissed on the bonfire and forced these cultural traditions to fizzle out because of the march of technology

In Ethiopia these stories were spread by the azmari or wandering troubadour. Known as the singing gazelle, he (it was always a he) travelled around the country with his masenqo, a simple single-stringed instrument played with a bow in the same way that bawdy English troubadours courted maidens in medieval times.

This character was replicated in Italy with the canastoria, a word from the Italian meaning 'sung story' and this storyteller used songs, images or words to put across his stories. In Japan and India, other such figures carried and spread the words of its native people.

These stories were then always anecdotal and passed down through generations. First Nations in North America and Aborigines in Australia were prime examples of peoples who kept these stories alive around the campfire.

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But then somebody stamped out the campfire, pissed on the bonfire and forced these cultural traditions to fizzle out because of the march of technology. It looked as if these stories would be drowned out by Year Zero stories; the type of stories that only existed since that technology existed. Early online newspapers would only digitise stories that were published after their websites were built, not the wealth of stories and content published before that technology. We were offered up stories from the robots; the beginning of the robots' jackboot on our faces (to Bowdlerise George Orwell).

Thankfully we have archivists among us, the type of people such as folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax and his father who went around North America in the 1940s recording the music of that country. Others in the US such as West Coast filmmaker, bohemian, and drug addict Harry Smith created the amazing Anthology Of American Folk Music, one of the best records ever made.

These archivists were followed by those who used the web to begin to tabulate and digitise the world's stories... and then something else happened.

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The power of storytelling was something that brands and publishers suddenly began to use stories to engage their audiences, to enrapture their audiences; storytelling became trendy. While their stories are very far away from the azmaris' in Ethiopia, the song remained the same; people love stories.

The strange rise of social media reinforced the rebirth of storytelling. In many ways, those who use social media correctly and in an interesting way are not only mini-publishers, they are also storytellers. Disparate stories, of course, but linked by a similar thread that links Europe's Reynard the Fox trickster with fellow-trickster Coyote in North America.

Lilach Bullock is the founder of UK agency Socialable and was recently included in the prestigious Forbes Top 20 Social Media Power Influencers. Influence not withstanding, she also tells her particular stories not only through her social media presence', but by speaking at events around the world and spreading the word in a similar way to the troubadours and storytellers before her. "Storytelling is critical to every part of life, not just business and this is especially true with social media. People listen to stories and love being engaged in these stories. Nobody wants to be sold to and stories get a more truthful message across, a message that is accentuated by the speed of channels such as Twitter," she says.

Not only do Twitter and other social networks create a channel for the spread of stories, they also serve as a platform for these stories, so it's not a particularly big jump to turn 'traditional' social media channels into stories via a separate social storytelling platform.

Open to the public since April 2011, Storify is one such storytelling platform that collects media from across the web that can be published and shared through the Storify platform, in effect meaning that the web tells the story.

It has proved to be a very effective medium for breaking news stories and has become a hugely successful business, run by its five people. Last month the company was acquired for an undisclosed amount by US commenting platform Livefyre.

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Other storytelling platforms are breaking into the business. StoryStream prefers to tell stories from a brand's perspective, not a publisher's. Founded last year, the company already has Porsche, Nokia, Michelin and Getty Images as clients and it describes itself as a 'content curation and publishing platform'.

It also uses its curated collection of tweets, Vines and other content to display on huge screens at outdoor events such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed and Goodwood Revival Festival. "The need for brand storytelling hasn't changed. However the web creates a completely new type of storytelling landscape. True audience engagement now takes centre-stage as brands seek to move away from the old offline habits of simply broadcasting messages. "The breadth of media formats, data and communication channels is constantly growing and means storytelling needs to be an always-on and agile activity to connect with the right audiences.

This always works best when they are made part of the storytelling experience, something the web enables perfectly," said Alex Vaidya, Founder of StoryStream.

The notion that stories are any different now than they were when their first versions began to emanate across Ethiopia and Africa is a moot one. A huge screen at a Goodwood racing event appears to be very 'other' than an Ethiopian wazmari walking across the savannah, but perhaps it isn't that different at all.